Commentary on diverse topics that fascinate, confuse, elate and annoy us.
The Biocup is looking wonderful. I'm going to get me a biocup, too.
(I wrote this to The New Yorker Magazine today:)
WORK here?
So how exactly did you get to be so famous, Ms. Carneiro?
Linda OReilly comes up lots of times on Google--but none of them are me!!
Oh, to be notorious...
Children’s book on male penguins raising chick tops
CHICAGO – For a second consecutive year, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning "And Tango Makes Three," a children’s book about two male penguins caring for an orphaned egg, tops the list of American Library Association’s (ALA) 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007.
.....that workshops will run amok throughout the two-day event? Hahahahahahaah!
.....Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law -- crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders -- provides insufficient (FISA) court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The immunity outcome is predetermined," Feingold wrote in a memo today.
Obama came down on the side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who argued that a provision in the new law reaffirmed that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying. President Bush has argued that a war-time chief executive has powers that trump FISA.
"It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance -- making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law," Obama said today.
Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the most prominent Republican opponent of the compromise bill, issued a statement today calling that exclusivity provision "meaningless because that specific provision is now in [the] 1978 act." Specter said Bush just ignored existing law in starting the warrantless surveillance program.
The reason Barack/Pelosi support the compromise bill is that it contains a provision that was already there in the first place! (In other words, we get nothing new while George and his minions get immunity from prosecution.) Of course, Mr. Obama promises he will more strictly monitor intelligence operations, that these abuses should not occur in the future. So, it all comes down to whether or not we believe that promise.
Jack was never a good name for him. I had to give him a quick name to take him to the Vet. (Somehow, 'Baby Boy' Kampp sounded creepy.) I told Kurt to give him a big name, one that reflects his confident and inquisitive personality. Kurt named him 'Jabba'. (I added 'the Nutt'). Jabba loves Kurt and follows him all around. This is good. I'm sure we'll have Shadow for a long time yet, but he's eleven years old now and won't last forever. Kurt needs a boy cat, and with Duko and Shadow raising him, Jabba will be a fine fellow. Cross your fingers that he doesn't develop the dreaded 'Callie' disease. No sign of it yet, No intention tremor, no problem eating. I hope, I hope.....
Click on the photo for the larger image, otherwise you won't be able to see Jack at all. (Look at how alarmed poor Tuna is. He knows that if he makes the baby cry, Duko will wallop him.)
In one of the numbers from “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye sings, with a mixture of emotions: “We haven’t got the man ... we had when we began.”
Back in January when Barack Obama pulled off his stunning win in the Iowa caucuses, and people were lining up in the cold and snow for hours just to get a glimpse of him, there was a wide and growing belief — encouraged to the max by the candidate — that something new in American politics had arrived.
His brilliant, nationally televised victory speech in Des Moines sent a shiver of hope through much of the electorate. “The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face,” said Senator Obama, “who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know.”
Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.
You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.
This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.
One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.
But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.
So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. Separation of church and state? Forget about it.
And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. What was the man thinking?
Thankfully, a majority on the court left the barbaric Scalia-Thomas-Obama (and John McCain) reasoning behind and held that capital punishment would apply only to homicides.
For one thing, he’s taking his base for granted, apparently believing that such stalwart supporters as blacks, progressives and pumped-up younger voters will be with him no matter what. A taste of the backlash this can produce erupted on the candidate’s own Web site.
Thousands of Obama supporters flooded the site with protests over his decision to support an electronic surveillance bill that gives retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The senator had previously promised to filibuster the bill if it contained the immunity clause.
There has been a reluctance among blacks to openly criticize Senator Obama, the first black candidate with a real shot at the presidency. But behind the scenes, there is discontent among African-Americans, as well, over Mr. Obama’s move away from progressive issues, including his support of the Supreme Court’s decision affirming the constitutional right of individuals to bear arms.
There’s even concern that he’s doing the Obama two-step on the issue that has been the cornerstone of his campaign: his opposition to the war in Iraq. But the senator denied that any significant change should be inferred from his comment that he would “continue to refine” his policy on the war.
Mr. Obama is betting that in the long run none of this will matter, that the most important thing is winning the White House, that his staunchest supporters (horrified at the very idea of a President McCain) will be there when he needs them.
He seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.
Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn’t engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual.
Time flies and the Iowa caucuses seem a very long time ago.
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From the looks of this article in the NYT we'll soon be priced out of our childhood playground.
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To celebrate I want everyone to tune into the previous post's link to Matt's Happy Dance. And dance!
